un: tikkunolam

[accidentallich]

I pet a cat that was bigger than me today.

My life is now complete.

Comments

[accidentallich]

I'm rooting for you! Pet cats to your heart's content!

this reply is a couple of hours later ICly

[bloodyroses]

Alright, I'm back.

Have a few cuts on my arms. But I'm pretty sure I didn't get cursed and more importantly, I HAVE PET THE CAT.

[accidentallich]

Congratulations! I'm sorry about the scratches though.

[bloodyroses]

This is pretty much nothing. I've dealt with owlbears before, big cat is NOTHING compared to that.

Of course I ran away screaming because that's what you do with an owlbear, but still.

[accidentallich]

Those are two animals I really don't think should be combined so much.

[bloodyroses]

You and most other people, I think. They exiled the person who invented the owlbear in my world, but that was a few hundred years ago. She was even forced to legally change her last name to Owlbear and everything.

She was put on an uninhabited island and they thought that was the last of her.

Then she brought the dinosaurs back.

[accidentallich]

Maybe it wasn't a good idea to put someone like that in a place where she'd be bored.

[bloodyroses]

That's how it is with archmages, like, all the time. You leave them somewhere alone for a couple of hours, and then suddenly they've done something stupid like build a sentient toaster.

Or there's just a floating water orb and it's full of sharks.

I'm not making any of these up, these are things real wizards have done.

[accidentallich]

Why??

I only know one wizard where I'm from, and I don't understand him at all, but I thought he was strange, not the norm.

[bloodyroses]

I'm not super magically gifted? I know a few spells, but here's what I've got:

Magic is basically a force that lets you overwrite the baseline laws of reality into...it depends. There's rules to how it works and they don't always make sense.

Sometimes they're practical. One of the first spells I learned was this one where you fuck around with gravity in a REALLY limited capacity. It's not good for much else, but if you fall off a building, you can basically land on the ground the way a feather does instead of just splatting yourself on the street.

[ Cordy likes spells that have an obvious practical use. ]

And then some people get like, REALLY into studying magic. Which is cool, I guess, you get nerds who are obsessed with pretty much any subject.

The way my mom explained it, and this is a REALLY abridged version, once you accumulate vast amounts of arcane power, there's not a whole lot of hard limits on what you can do. You're limited by how much mental energy you have for any given day and how much patience beings of equal or greater power have for you, and that's pretty much it.

So of course you make the shark orb. Why wouldn't you? Why the fuck not? Who's going to stop you?

I guess I should make the disclaimer that not all wizards are like this.

Actually, rule of thumb: the more powerful a wizard is the more unreasonable they're going to be. Your normie hedge wizards are alright.

[accidentallich]

Nu, the one I knew must have been really, really powerful then.

[bloodyroses]

...what'd they do.

[accidentallich]

My ex turned me into a lich.

[bloodyroses]

WHAT

WHAT THE FUCK?!

STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES

[ Okay, sorry, she's freaking out a little because of what she recently found out about HER OWN MOTHER, but she manages to type a little more. ]

Okay, unless you were in on the whole thing, and I doubt it,

[ because you seem to know sweet fuck all about magic ]

that shouldn't even be possible. Pretty much all of the liches in my world's history became that way themselves because they deliberately chose to.

Plus I think you actively need to participate in the ritual.

tw: body horror

[accidentallich]

Maybe it works differently in your world? There was a potion he tricked me into drinking. I only found out what it was when my skin started sloughing off.

[bloodyroses]

It's usually a two-parter from what I know.

There's a ritual done to make sure the soul stays in its little soul box when you die, but it involves a LOT of stuff that's super personal to the one who's going to get lichified.

[ Although if he's talking about his ex, that would explain a lot... ]

The vessel you use to contain the soul has to be either made for that specific purpose or something super important to you that's been modified beforehand to be able to accept what's happening next.

Every source I've seen also says something about the blood of someone you loved? So that's a thing.

Then after the ritual's done, you've got this potion you drink that's got some poison mixed in.

There's a pretty high failure rate for the lich ritual already and if it fails, you just up and die. But if it succeeds, lich time?

I'm sorry I can't go more into detail, this is just what your average mage knows about it in my world. The only people who know the super specifics are the people actively trying to get lich and die trying.

[accidentallich]

I think I don't actually want to know too much about what went into it, if it's all the same to you.

[bloodyroses]

Shit, no, I understand. Sorry for getting into a little too much information.

It's not something most mages in my world decide to just do.

Even the shark orb guy would be shaking his head right now.

[accidentallich]

It's a terrible thing to do to yourself, and even worse to do to someone you supposedly love without their consent.

[bloodyroses]

No idea what the fuck that guy's problem was.

I dunno, I just really wish I didn't know some of the stuff I did sometimes.

[accidentallich]

He wanted to be together for eternity, or something like that. Of course I told him I never wanted to see him again.

[bloodyroses]

Honestly, probably the best call.

[accidentallich]

He found my apartment a couple months ago.

[bloodyroses]

Okay, please clarify before I decide whether or not I'm gonna have to start busting heads.

You mean here, or in your own world?

[accidentallich]

My own world! He's not here, thank God.